When a local food pantry receives a large donation of milk or produce, making sure all of that food gets to families in need before it goes bad can be a challenge.
When that situation comes up, Interchurch Food Pantry manager Carol Phipps will get on the phone and begin contacting other local pantries to see what their needs are and if they’d be able to help in distributing those items.
Phipps would like to see the creation of a more coordinated system, such as an email list, that would allow pantries to easily send out messages when they haves food, goods or services they could share with others.
Several local food pantries are looking into ways they can better coordinate their efforts to serve needy Johnson County residents. More than a dozen food pantries spread across the county provide assistance to residents in need of food. They range from one large pantry that receives more than 1 million pounds of food per week to smaller ones that open their doors to local residents a couple times a month.
Last week, officials from those pantries began discussing possible ways they could coordinate their efforts and address other challenges that they face, such as the need for transportation for residents seeking out their services and regular volunteers. David Owens, president of the Johnson County Ministerial Association, organized the meeting with the hope of finding ways for pantries to work together.
The Interchurch Food Pantry was started from an effort of local churches to combine their food pantry efforts several decades ago, Phipps said. Having a large pantry is efficient because of the size of donations that they are able to process, but other local pantries serve an important role as well, because of their ability to reach residents who may not have the ability to travel longer distances, Phipps said.
A challenge for many seniors who rely on food pantries is that they often lack transportation, said Kim Smith, director of Johnson County Senior Services. That is especially an issue in parts of the county that don’t have sidewalks and crosswalks necessary to make areas accessible for pedestrians, she said.
Senior services is able to provide transportation to the elderly and disabled, and one request that is becoming increasingly common is to be taken to a food pantry, she said.
Another consistent challenge for local food pantries is getting volunteers who will come on a regular basis, such as once or twice a week to help with preparing or distributing food.
While larger groups that want to come in for a day or afternoon are helpful, pantries rely on regular volunteers to stay running, Phipps said.
Going forward, the plan is to expand from this initial gathering to a larger one with all of the local food pantries, along with additional churches, with the aim of finding additional ways to assist them, Owens said.
